


Where Loyalties Lie

by tragakes (lejf)



Category: Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Idealistic happy little Megatron, Illustrated, M/M, Secret Identity, Soundwave pops the hell off, just look at the colours, or read the story instead i think, the image is kinda shitty tho
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-25
Updated: 2018-06-25
Packaged: 2019-05-28 09:19:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15045830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lejf/pseuds/tragakes
Summary: (Role reversal) AU: Megatron is a fresh, promising recruit into the Decepticon cause — and somehow he finds himself falling for his anonymous handler.





	Where Loyalties Lie

 

‘Decepticon’ command was a nondescript place. On entering, Megatron couldn’t help wondering if the other gladiators had been playing him for a fool. One of the windows was covered in old cloth and blowing faintly with the wind. The ceiling was unpainted dull metal. A pair of mechs sat drinking energon on one of the far tables as the only customers in the establishment. Behind the counter, another mech stood beside the energon-processing typing on a data-pad. The menu on the wall read a list from high to low grade, medical and ration type.

It was an eatery. Megatron had been told so, but it was difficult nonetheless to reconcile reality with the image that he’d hoped to have been greeted with. He’d been told that this was the heart of the ‘Decepticon’ movement — that, if he wanted to be able to participate in more than rallies and speeches, he went _here_. 

The mech at the counter looked up at his approach. “Good afternoon,” Megatron tried, and the mech shuttered slowly back at him.

“Morning. Order?”

Surely they wouldn’t have lied to him. No gladiator wished to risk Megatron’s wrath. “I’m here for an interview.”

The mech glanced to the side of the counter and flicked a switch in the wall. “Just down the back. I’ve unlocked the door for you.”

“Thank you,” Megatron said, and moved around the counter to a corridor that he’d assumed led to storage and staff facilities. The walls were dingy, not treated for water resistance — simply a typical building in Kaon’s standards. Surely it was merely a front that was necessary. Megatron hoped that they, in reality, had greater resources at their disposal. He’d heard impressive things whispered about the Decepticon movement. 

Sabotage, organised protests: nearly everything publicised was rumoured to be organised through the ‘Decepticons’. If a mech wants to be more involved, he went to the Decepticons, but he could only find them if he knew the right people and heard the right things. ‘Decepticon’ was not their official name. To Megatron’s knowledge, they had no official name, but the mechs in the underground had simply taken to calling them that. There was some sort of story there, but he was not familiar with it. 

He had to duck his head to fit through the door that gave way at his push, and it opened into a small sitting room that was just as drab as the rest of the building. There were a few pamphlets in holders from the walls, seats that were rusting at the bottom and another femme that glanced up at his approach. She brightened.

“Here for the first time? I’d have recognised you, _Megatron_ ,” she said, rising. “Love your matches.”

The enormous gladiator shifted slightly at the recognition, though it shouldn’t have come as a surprise. He was well-known through Kaon as the king of the ring, and the feeling that it’d taken him too long to register for the movement was quickly coalesceing. He should’ve been one of the first mechs in it, but here he was, only arriving now, because he’d only _heard_ of its inner working cogs now. His move from the mines had not been long ago, and he’d risen into infamy through the gladiator arena very quickly. Yet — he should’ve been here earlier. 

“Yes, I am. Thank you,” he said, and took one of the pamphlets from the wall. It was of minimalistic design, grey overall, clean white text. The seat creaked dangerously under his weight.

_We are not thrill-seekers,_ it read. _If you have arrived here uncommitted: leave. If you have arrived here fanatic: leave._

_Here, you will be an instrument of war. If you object to this: leave._

_You will not be fully informed. You will not know the next step. You will not know what your actions amount to. These are security measures. If you object to these: leave._

He turned over the page, surprised. It was not what he’d expected. 

_To those who fulfil the requirements, you will be assigned a handler._

_It is possible we will not have a handler for you. This does not reflect your willingness, merely your circumstance and your skill set. This is not to confirm that you are not capable of benefiting the cause. You will be informed when rallies and protests and non-specific events may require your aid, and are fully encouraged to attend._

_We are not a playground. We are not a dare. We are not the distributor of thrills nor heroics. We are an organised crime syndicate._

Megatron turned it over to check for text he could have missed. “This is strangely… informative.” Through the stains in the walls he swore he caught sight of something else. Or perhaps it was intuition. There were microphones in here. Someone was listening.

“That’s how things work around here,” the femme said. “They’re _cutthroat_ , you know? Well, depends on your handler. SW was cutthroat as hell, but SK is a little nicer.”

“Are those handlers aliases?”

“Yes,” the femme said, surprisingly relaxed for being in Megatron’s presence. “They’re good at their jobs. You trust them with your life, mech.”

“How do you know they’re not lying to you?”

“You don’t.” She tipped her head. “But they’ll probably know the layout of whatever place you’re infiltrating down to the _wire_ , and they’ll know the schedules of everyone working inside to the klik — and that level of information… that doesn’t come easy. Sure is easy to lose, though,” she said.

“Which is why they’re so cautious,” Megatron tested.

She seemed to consider his answer. “SK says we probably _could_ tear down the Senate with just brute force and a bit of planning, but here they’re trying to minimise loss.”

“Lives?” ‘Loss’ sounded suspicious.

“Yeah, lives. Maybe more. Don’t know the last time I heard of one of us getting killed out there. But hell if it isn’t dangerous, mech. Sure you’re up for it?”

“You could almost insult me with that question.”

“‘Course. Gladiator. My bad.”

The door opened behind them — not the door to the actual interview room — and another pair of mechs walked in, chattering to themselves, though they stopped when they saw who was inside. 

“Damn, you got back before us?” 

The femme seemed to lounge smugly. “Yeah, well, wasn’t picked by SW for nothing.”

“He handed you _off_ , bot.”

“Not because I was bad. He said he’s busy,” the femme said. “Whatever. No one keeps him for long — probably because he sets the expectations too high for the others. SK already feels _drab_. I think he’s scared of violence.”

The two mechs noticed Megatron then, though Megatron was more shocked that they’d managed to miss his warframe on first entering. “Oh hey, you’re— Megatron, aren’t you?”

At the same moment, the interview door opened. “Come in!” a voice called. 

“Go on, new guy,” the femme said, when Megatron glanced over to her in the expectation that she would enter. “I can wait.’

With a tip of his helm in acknowledgement and the conversation still going behind him, Megatron stepped into a small room that would’ve been claustrophobic if he hadn’t once been a miner. The door shut, remotely controlled — the first piece of more-than-shabby technology he’d seen in this place — into absolute silence. It must’ve been noise-cancelling. 

In front of him was a metal wall. A bench. A small slot in the wall through which he could see a hint of blue. Beside him was a chair that he sat down in to face the opaque wall. There was a camera facing him.

The walls here were clean. It felt strangely clinical. 

“Look,” the voice said. It hummed. “We got over five recommendations from our mecha for you. Normally two already spells good things.”

Megatron didn’t know how to respond to that. Of course they already knew who he was. If the mech at the counter hadn’t already informed them, the microphones in the waiting room had. He remained silent and still.

“So let’s see… please confirm your frame specifications: BC size class, frame-type — rebuilt to F9? Funny choice —, thrusters model 29x–“

“I can’t verify most of these,” Megatron interrupted. He doubted he’d be punished for it, but if he was, it was a sign that the organisation wasn’t to be trusted. “I don’t know my records.”

“Well, now you do,” the mech said. Through the small slot, Megatron saw the blue move. “Well, not like we don’t have a whole file on you already. Sure was expecting you any day now. How about this, big guy? _You_ tell me why you’re here.”

Megatron had never been for an interview before. Was this what they were all like? “If you’re fighting for freedom like you so claim — like everyone so claims — I cannot stand by. I’ll either aid you or stop you. It is a matter of _integrity_. I have had- friends, co-workers, my own life in the palm of the Senate. Surely you cannot fault a mech for wishing to upend that.”

“Noble, then.” The mech chuckled, and Megatron was suddenly reminded of the words on the pamphlet. “Look– I know the boss wrote that this wasn’t for heroics and all, but he’s wrong there. This whole cause is for bots who deserve better. You can’t take the noble out of it, but you sure can put off mecha who think it’s just for that. What else is there? Anger? You angry, big guy?”

Megatron thought back to his mines that’d been closed under the hand of Senator Decimus. The _Senators_ , so untouchable, surrounded by hundreds of guards at all times, nearly always in their ivory towers, impossible to kill. Impossible to dethrone. “Yes,” he said, because it was futile to lie otherwise. 

“Good. Something’s wrong with a bot if they don’t have a lick of anger in ‘em when they’re starving out in Kaon.” More shifting noises, drawers being opened. “Well I got good news for you, big guy. If you’re still up for it, SS here is lined up to take you out on your first spin.

“Now, this ain’t a guarantee. Fragger could hate you. That fragger hates everything, actually — but maybe he’ll hate you _a lot_ , and we don’t have any other handlers free right now. So don’t go bragging.”

“I understand. You value discretion.”

“This _isn’t a game_ ,” the mech said, dipping further into serious. Through the slot, a slender black device was slid through. “Don’t presume to know things. You might have to kill. You might _get_ killed. I know that as a gladiator this isn’t something new to you, but this isn’t gonna be like the rings.”

Megatron peered at equipment that lay on the bench, daring to pick it up.

“What you’re holding is a comm and live feed. Novel, I know. Install it into your audial and your handler is gonna talk to you through it during missions, and for utter fuck’s sake, _listen to your handler_. This is not about seeing who can beat up who. This isn’t about making a _show_ of it or bringing in creds like you’re used to. Your handler will’ve gone over and over your mission plan. They’re gonna know how it’s supposed to pan out. They’re gonna tell you what to do, and you _do it_. If it goes to hell, they’re your best chance, understand?”

“I do,” Megatron said, still peering at the comm device. He wanted to know who they were, but surely everybody did. And it was a futile question. “Why?”

“Why what? I ain’t playing the guessing game with you here, bot.”

“Why _any_ of this? The discretion? The use of Kaon mechs when you clearly have greater technology and intelligence than warrants it?”

“You’re thinking and trying to say that we’re just like the Senate, aren’t you?” He was correct, but Megatron didn’t confirm it. “Working in the shadows, no transparency, asking others to take the risks for us… and guess what? You might be right there. That sounds _real_ like the Senate.”

The mech’s voice dipped lower. “But we ain’t gonna sit by and tell Kaon to start a _war_ instead and throw themselves bodily into battle after battle ‘cause that’s how they’re used to tackling problems. No. Listen here. We have the tools and we have the knowledge to end this if we play it hard and smart and fast. 

“But I can’t prove to you that we’re not the Senate without giving us away. I can’t prove to you that this isn’t some sorta grand manipulation that you might be paranoid about. I can’t even tell you anything about our timeline because we can’t take any security leaks. I can’t re-assure you if we’re close, or if we’re far away and there are a lot of fights to go. 

“If you trust us, you go with us. You make this possible. If you don’t… you walk back out that door right now and keep fighting in your rings and writing your poetry and going to your riots. It’s this or that, Megatron. Are you open to being used as an instrument of war?”

Megatron had always been _used_. In the mines he was nothing but a slave. In the rings he was given the illusion of triumph, but he was still merely a plaything for the rich. 

This could be. This could be another trap, another dance laid by the Senate, but on the off-chance that it _wasn’t_ , if it was a way to overthrow their oppressors—

“If I wasn’t, I wouldn’t be here.”

“Aren’t you sweet? Three days time, 1930, get down to East Kaon, sector B. Pop the comm in and SS’ll take you from there. You report back here after every mission. If you lose the comm, you tell us right away, and then we take you in for interrogation and deactivate it. ‘Lose’ the comm and don’t tell us? Well, I don’t gotta lay it out for you.”

“And hey,” the mech added, “welcome on the team for now, newbie.”

*

East Kaon, sector B was a long stretch of warehouses that were mostly abandoned. Homeless and empties scampered through barely-illuminated streets, and the ambient noises were of creaking metal walls and the occasional skitter of what might’ve been claws. Megatron had ascended into the upper floors of an empty building, overlooking the streets.

The comm-piece in his audial crackled to life exactly on time. “Designation,” came a drawl behind it, mechanised so that it wouldn’t be recognised. Megatron wondered briefly if the waspish tone was artificial or not. 

“Megatron,” he replied quietly.

“Voice-check… this is SS, on 521. Kaon, 1930. Rookie, today you’re going to be intercepting an envoy and killing every last bot with them, understood?”

The other mechs had spoken of their missions as stealth and sabotage, but Megatron presumed mass killing and strength was what he was going to be used for, since he had demonstrated his experience in the arena for it to the public already. “Yes.”

“Now— what are you doing up here? Get down to the ground. Down this street, take a turn right, down that one again, and five streets over.”

“I didn’t know where exactly to wait for you,” Megatron said as he descended the building through a staircase he’d scaled. Where were once doors were rusted gaping entrances, and he tried to follow his handler’s instructions.

Except a sharp tone cut in, “What’re you doing going _that_ way?”

“You said down the street.” Megatron tried to quash the vague string of annoyance in him. Why was this so— unprofessional? Everything else in the registering process had been immaculate so far. 

“Yes, the _other way_.” His handler, however, clearly had no such compunctions and the modulated voice was openly peeved. “Isn’t it obvious? If you keep going, it’s a dead end.”

“I’m afraid I didn’t know.”

“Don’t you _live_ here?”

And ‘here’ either meant this sector or Kaon in general — which implied his handler either wasn’t from Kaon or that he had little knowledge of how gladiators lived. Megatron wasn’t _homeless_. He stayed in the barracks of the arena, performing shows only too often and even backstage after-hours. Some mechs paid handsomely just to see him, the gladiator, up close. Most others wanted some sort of bragging right or satisfaction. He’d give performance matches, or displays of strength, or more, essentially rented out as a show mech. All gladiators were kept close, the merchandise ready on call. They weren’t the same as buy-mechs, but everyone in Kaon could be bought in some way or another for their services. Megatron’s services just happened to be violence.

But, to return his processor to the task at hand, it was possible that the mech wasn’t from Kaon. Whether or not this was intentionally slipped was ambiguous. Perhaps it was all a facade? 

“My living quarters are in the arena,” he tried. Further chastisement would require clarification from his handler whether he had meant Kaon in general or this sector.

SS seemed to realise. “Turn right,” he said. Then, “Hurry up. Better early than late.”

“Aren’t you concerned that I’ll be recognised?” Megatron asked, as he saw the lights from the optics of homeless mechs peering around from rusty walls, through broken windows, dark crevices. 

“Oh, that’s inevitable. They’ll spill if they’re paid to. There’ll be hits out on you for sure, but I assume you’re capable of dealing with them.”

Megatron fought not to ex-vent loudly and protest. The _flippancy_ of the voice in his audial made it much more enraging. He himself had considered this as an outcome, considered it necessary and that it could’ve been a boon to the cause with such a well-known gladiator backing it. But–

Stop. He needed to keep a level helm. This would be a dangerous situation. He couldn’t lower himself to arguing when it’d place him into a poor mindset for battle. 

He followed the rest of his handler’s instructions in stony silence, walking down streets, and thought with some vindication that his handler was more like a navigation system than a mech. It was petty, but it helped calm him. Megatron was in control here. 

“Stop,” he was ordered as he was crossing a bridge over a set of lower streets. “Now we wait.”

Megatron looked out into the darkness and did not attempt conversation. At least the darkness of Kaon was familiar, whether it was underground or above ground, though there was a subtle difference in taste and feel of the air. Here he could pretend that he was just some mech looking for time alone. Brooding. 

“They’ll pass beneath you,” the voice said. “When I tell you to jump, _jump_ , because you’ll want to land in the back compartment where our targets are. If you break right through the ceiling, kill them immediately. If you don’t, we’ll enter through back hatch and attack then. Understood?”

“Yes,” Megatron said. “Who am I killing?”

“You don’t need to know that.”

“I _wish_ to know.”

“Are you really trying to start up _this_ argument now?” The voice was incredulous. “They told me you accepted our terms, and _now_ you’re trying to pull cold pedes on me?”

“Have you ever killed a bot?” Megatron asked darkly. “Taking a life is no easy feat. It requires a toll on the spark. I cannot give you everything to have _nothing_ in return.” There was a low roar in the distance, the sound of engines approaching. 

“Oh _please_ , trying to threaten me? I know what you’re trying to play; the envoy’s nearly here — so do you know what my answer is? Have _I_ ever _killed_ a bot?” Suddenly the voice became much more clearer. In hindsight, Megatron would realise that the mech had turned off his modulator momentarily, and that the voice was just as grating as he’d thought it’d been, but at the time the energon was roaring through his lines too loudly to hear, and his spark was like a war-drum in his chest. “ _Yes_. _Jump._ ”

Megatron threw himself off the bridge. Wind whipped around him, violently loud, and he saw the truck hurtling beneath him, growing larger. In the next moment metal was shrieking, his large frame had carried him through through the ceiling and thudding into the floor, denting it and shaking the entire vehicle. Mechs surrounded him — the familiar sound of weapons being onlined — and then Megatron’s transformed mace-arm ripped them apart. Energon exploded across the walls of the truck’s carriage, and he knew they were Senators’ hired mechs, their plating too clean, their blasters not of Kaon-make, and _those_ observations were what carried him through the fight rather than trust in his handler or to the cause. 

His claws stabbed through the seats and pierced the driver, energon spraying over the front windscreen, and then ripped out the seat entirely to block a blaster-shot. The mechs were un-coordinated. Surprised. Most of them dead already, and in too close quarters to shoot. The the din he realised that he did not notice any cargo. What were they transporting?

But Megatron tore them open limb-to-limb until there was only one left, one that he’d deemed a lesser threat, screaming and fumbling for the back latch. He stood— made his choice, and grabbed them and pinned them down. 

Wide optics watched him with fear, an entire frame shaking in his grasp. “ _Tell me_ ,” Megatron snarled, knowing SS could hear. If he couldn’t get an answer out of his handler he’d interrogate it from this mech. “Who am I killing?”

“Oh, you _scrap_ ,” his handler said. “You’re really not doing wonders for your case of _not being a spy_ here, you know?”

“TELL ME!” Megatron roared. The truck still violently shook as it spun out of control. He was a terror in all his right, his war-paint accentuating the ruggedness of him, all of him red and energon-coated like a scream. 

The mech’s optics flickered out, completely dark. Megatron stared in shuttered surprise. They’d- _died_? Was it shock? How?

Then the vehicle smashed into an old warehouse with a sound like the world crushing and the front compartment exploded into flames. Megatron threw himself out the back, the hatch exploding as he rolled across the concrete, heat erupting behind him as the vehicle was consumed. 

“Had fun?” his handler asked mildly, deliberate counterpoint to the ashes and metal embers raining down the street. “They’d only passed out, you know. But _now_ they’re most certainly dead.”

Still incensed with bloodlust, Megatron wanted to find him and tear his head off too.

*

In the sitting room, alone, this time, Megatron allowed himself to re-indulge in his doubts as he absently picked dried energon off his frame. At least it was inconspicuous for him to walk through Kaon with energon across him. Mechs, once they recognised him, hardly raised any objections, and he hadn’t been followed down the quieter streets into the establishment. 

Perhaps this wasn’t the place for him. Megatron had … qualms following orders, and he’d managed to antagonise his handler before the very first order. It was not encouraging. Perhaps this had been a mistake after all.

The door opened. “Come in,” the voice called.

Again, he sat in the small chair, facing the blank wall with a single slot. The mech began to laugh. Megatron felt his tension rise. 

“Okay,” the mech said, finally, placing what sounded like both his servos against a table, “you know what? I think SS is slag and all, and it’s gonna be a sure ride seeing the boss chew him out, but that was a _disaster_.”

“I apologise,” Megatron replied stiffly. 

“You don’t have to fake being sorry.” So they could see through him easily, though that should’ve been expected; Megatron knew he wasn’t subtle. “You’re inquisitive. I get it. You wanna know why you’re fighting because you don’t want to be used. It’s a good thing. But it’s also why we can’t have you. Sorry.”

Megatron dipped his helm. Somehow, although he’d been expecting it, the finality stung a little. He’d _wanted_ this to work out, he realised, and that it wouldn’t have gone that way if SS just hadn’t been so _annoying_. Megatron had loathed his superiority instinctively. He’d wanted to tamper with it — and it’d forsaken his chance. The blame didn’t lie entirely on his handler, of course, but there was still lingering resentment there.

He could start his own rebellion. There were alternatives. He could–

“Oh, actually. Give me a klik.”

There was a period of long silence. Megatron felt interest perk its head. Was the mech receiving orders to keep Megatron after all? Did they want him that much? 

“Well,” the mech said. “Put your kit back through the slot. I’ll need to change it.”

The communicator was slid through, and the mech asked, “Do you still want to do this?”

“Yes.” Megatron wanted to prove that he _was_ capable of being a good soldier — and capable of keeping his word. It irked him, he realised, that he’d said he would be able to follow orders well and then failed to. 

“Then it’s your lucky day. Boss says that we’ll give you another shot, that SS’s being an aft, hah, and… here we go.”

The device reappeared from the slot. “Your new handler’s SW. He’ll treat you well. He- doesn’t take a lot of mechs now, but we need someone with a level head for you.”

Megatron took the communicator into his servos. It was just as unidentifiably a minuscule black box as before. 

“He has a coupla requirements for audio sensitivity, so I want you to try it on when you’re outside somewhere, when you’re somewhere loud, somewhere quiet, explosions, et cetera, so it can be tested. Understood?”

“Yes,” Megatron said, wondering what he could make of that information. Were many bots sensitive to loud noises? Was that why ‘SW’ as a handler didn’t take many mechs, because it’d expose this possibly incriminating detail? 

Or was it all an obfuscation? 

The featureless communicator revealed to him no answers.

*

The roar of the crowd was muffled through the thick walls of the arena. Megaton sat polishing the plating of his mace-arm, feeling the familiar stir of energon in his lines as the announcement for the battle drew closer and closer. It was only an instinctive response. Before battle, energon flow increased. It was a survival mechanism. An imperative.

Some gladiators grew excited at the prospect of matches. For Megatron, something dark and solemn fell over him. Today was a string of death-matches. He did not think he would lose — not against these opponents — and that meant he would be the executioner, the unwilling axe that fell on the head to kill one of his own people. It was his only way forward, and he excelled at it, but whatever enjoyment he derived from it was logically sickening. 

The communicator he’d installed into his audial was silent. Perhaps SW wasn’t around, though Megatron didn’t know how it worked. And for a moment he took his mind away from the realm of the arena and thought about how the handlers might have lived. Perhaps they were a group of vigilante mechs with formidable hacking and technological capabilities. That would explain the intel, the equipment, and the desperation for secrecy. He did not think they were Kaonian mechs, but then it raised the question of _why_ they had started the Deception movement. Had they been slighted by the Senate in the past? Empurata? A conjunx as a victim? 

Hatred was a powerful motivator. So was the desire to survive, and flying against the face of the Senate was directly unconducive to that. 

The clacking that was the rise of the gladiator gates snapped him back to the dim dusty room — and as soon as there was space to exit, Megatron did, ducking beneath the rising gates, his strides long, the metal on his arm rippling into its familiar mace-form. The mech entering the arena opposite him was about his size, painted in long streaks of purple and wielding a hammer, plating flared out in reflexive intimidation. 

The noise from the stands was endless; Megatron lost sight of the audience, their facial features melting away until they were just machines of sound. Bodies and shouting. Not real mechs. Drones. In the arena, he would forget that he fought to entertain. He fought to _live_.

They clashed in the middle in a shower of sparks, their point of connection of mace and hammer trembling as the mech opposite him shook. Megatron pushed, and pushed, and felt the moment the mech’s pede slipped and he fell back. The kick Megatron landed into the mech’s stomach folded his plating inward, splurged energon from around the seams, and then the hammer came forward again but Megatron’s mace-swing went _through_ it, tearing the weapon right out of the mech’s hands and crushing his arms. 

There was a cry of pain; Megatron did not hear it. He pinned the mech into the dirt and the crowd was screaming, screaming like thousands of crows and vultures, and the world narrowed down into a needle-point. There was always a moment before a mech died, as the door to death was opened to admit a mech and Megatron, the escort, peered through the eye-hole. It was a moment where a mech realised that their spark would be snuffed forever. Typically the moment was horror — horror at seeing the true visage of the end, so palpable that it seared itself into Megatron’s processor, and sometimes it was fear. Other times it was anger. Rarely, it was hate. In this mech’s optics, there was helplessness and terror and then _nothing_ as the mace crumpled through his chestplate and spark. 

Megatron stood, and sound returned. Energon of his enemy dripped from him. His arm was scratched lightly, but otherwise he sustained no injuries. Megatron, the gladiator, had killed again, and would kill again so long as he remained undefeated and continued to breathe in this world.

“If it is a betrayal to kill those in similar straits,” a voice said in his audial, so suddenly that he nearly flinched as he was led out of the arena, “then, for you, it is a necessary one.”

Even through the cheering, even through the modulation that flattened the nuances of his speech into monotone, the voice was- _professional_. It did not have that same sneering screeching edge as the last handler. It was level, carefully controlled — the type of voice that a mech, without even thinking, would obey, and it was so stark against the rave of the noise around him. 

“But I will help you justify it,” the voice said. 

Megatron wanted greatly to trust it. How easy it would be, to listen to this voice forever, to listen to this mech. 

The waiting-room of the arena was quiet. Megatron would be given a ten klik break before his next match. Today was filled with them, back-to-back, mech after mech, Megatron like a turbo-hound loosed and leashed for the audience to enjoy.

“Fifty creds,” Megatron said in the relative privacy, his large frame settled against a bench by the wall. Energon was drying stiff down his arm. “The price of admittance into today’s matches, and the price of the sparks I have taken.”

“Then I will endeavour to reimburse you in the future,” the voice said. Megatron would remember that promise.

*

“What is this?” His vocaliser echoed in the empty metal room, the door still open behind him. He had followed SW’s instructions, travelled to Kaon’s station to find a train ticket had been paid for him all the way into the far reaches of outer Altihex, and continued down his directed path with a sort of growing doubt.

“A facility dedicated to the treatment of natural coolant. It may be located in Altihex, but its contents are distributed through to Iacon. The facility’s alarms have been disabled for you.”

“How?”

“Another mech completed that task earlier.”

His newest handler was quite generous with information. It was a marked difference already that Megatron obviously approved of. He was placing his life into this mech’s servos. It was only right that he was afforded some measure of trust in return. 

“And that mech couldn’t have continued?” The corridors were empty, but thrumming with electrical energy of the system. No lights were on, and Megatron moved with a hand on the wall and his handler’s directions alone. 

“No. They were not physically present. Ten steps forwards, and to your right there will be a door. It will need to be forcibly opened.”

Megatron felt the dip in the wall where the door started. He pressed a claw into its dreams, the metal groaning as it gave way. His optics were dimmed onto the lowest glow possible, their red lights not sufficient to illuminate even his facial features. He’d been told that it was likely he’d be caught on the facility’s cameras — therefore his identity should be hidden. 

The door was wrenched open into another dark abyss of a room. Megatron could hear the churn of engines inside, machinery littering the room like enormous living organs. 

“This is a room containing delicate coolant-processing units. Go forwards.”

Megatron strode forwards until his pedes bumped a warm thrumming tank, and he dug his claws into it, feeling through the dark, his optics dilated enough to see only vague outlines. 

“The tank before you: feel it. What do its glyphs read?” Megatron trailed his fingers over it, feeling for any bumps that were not merely connections to pipes.

“T-MP… 194?”

“Do the same for the tank on its right.” He followed a pipe connecting out from the tank until he reached another one, again letting his servos drift over.

“T-MP 200.”

“This will require delicacy, but I am confident in your skills. Do you feel a seam around the top of the tank?”

A pause. Megatron thought he felt a faint dip around its top, but he wasn’t certain. 

“If you cannot locate it, simply create a puncture yourself. From the top. If materials spill, our plot here will be discovered.”

His servo transformed into a hand of claws, gleaming and sharp, but the action of prodding a hole was surprisingly careful. 

“It will need to be wide enough to admit your servo, to reach inside to sabotage its processing unit. It will be painful. The compound in highly concentrated forms is corrosive.”

“Pain I can take,” Megatron muttered, widening the hole he’d punctured, mindful of tearing the metal too violently until he could slot his wrist in. “How large is the processor I’m looking for?” he asked. 

“I would estimate two servos, in fists.”

“Yours or mine?” Megatron asked, and then dipped his claws in. The pain was explosive. Fire felt like scraplets tearing up his claw, and his instinctive reaction to tear his hand away nearly ripped open the entire tank. His plating clamped down protectively, fans on full roar, and he could not feel anything but pain from his claw. He could not tell when it bumped into the wall of the tank, could not seem to feel for anything that could possibly be the processing unit. 

“-tron, if the pain is too acute and you cannot complete the task-“

He was not going to be felled by a mere tank of _liquid_. “As _if_ I’d back down.”

His HUD flashed alarms, and he found himself manually overriding auxiliary code that had dulled his hand’s sensors to protect it from the pain. The fire increased ten-fold, invisible scraplets seeming to tear the lines and nerves from his frame, but he could _feel_. His claws bumped through the tank, tracing out a blocky shape in the bottom-centre, and then pierced it with two claws that split it open.

Then he was withdrawing, the liquid sliding off his digits, its burn turning cold once it reached the air. He shook off any remaining drips into the tank. The claw had fallen numb again, but he assumed most of the damage was only superficial. 

“That will be sufficient. Exit the way you came.”

“What was this for?” Megatron groped his way back to the door with his uninjured hand, audials alert for any out-of-place sounds, but there was only the echo of his pedes and the low murmur of his voice. 

“These are tri-methyl-proplex filtration units. Filtration destroyed, it will be introduced into the general stream of coolant supplied to the Iaconian population. The intention here is both to kill and to render coolant non-consumable for general use, and engender mass unrest in Iacon citizens.”

“Towards the Senate?” Megatron asked, attempting to divert his processor from the pain somehow still throbbing in his servo. “But they’ll claim it Decepticon sabotage.”

“Correct. Unrest towards Decepticon movement.”

“Why?”

SW paused. Megatron found himself surprisingly sympathetic, considering his pushing of his last handler. 

“We require the Senate’s utmost attention. That is all I can divulge to you. Demands from Iaconian citizens, as a large percentile of the middle-upper class deprived of their specially-treated coolant, will aid this.”

A strange sense of pride radiated through Megatron. It was a _snub_ to the wealthy. He couldn’t fathom ‘natural spring coolant from the upper reaches of Altihex’, let alone the prevalence that Iaconians would consume it at. Mechs like Megatron, Kaonians, would not be impacted by his actions. Therefore it was undoubtably an act of sabotage by Decepticons, even if Megatron hadn’t been — what he suspected was intentionally — spotted by cameras into the facility.

He finally exited, the outside surprisingly bright for the evening, his optics adjusting — and looked down.

His servo appeared to have been worse than mauled. Plating had bubbled where it was completely eaten away, the wet gleam of thin energon lines and even the stark pale colour of his inner frame revealed beneath. Dead nanites oozed from his fingertips and thickened into scabs, and in the bumps and ridges of distended metal were pockets of denatured chemicals in the form of pus. 

Megatron stared, and then stared some more. He’d never witnessed a chemical burn, only physical violence, and there was something disturbing about an injury like this. Was it the thought of infection? Was it simply because it looked so unnatural?

“There is another task for you to fulfil tonight,” SW said quietly into his audials. “If you are not capable of it, it is not mandatory.”

“What is it?”

“There is a facility nearby dedicated to the storage of munitions. Tri-methyl-proplex is a component of their explosives. Set one off.”

“Is this to cover up the coolant sabotage for as long as possible?” If any mech discovered the elevated T-MP 200 levels in the coolant, they’d attribute it to the explosives. 

“It is — among other motivations.”

“Of course I’ll do it,” Megatron said. He would worry about his servo later. “Where do I go?”

He was given more directions to follow, and he did, pedes plodding down a broad empty street-way that was not paved. “Chemical burns are notoriously difficult to treat without a certified medic or medical equipment,” his handler said. “Residual chemicals stall self-repair, and improper plating or line removal may spread infection further.”

“I’ve suffered worse,” Megatron said. 

“You have. You are a remarkably resilient mech. That does not, however, invalidate any injuries. I trust you will handle your treatment accordingly.”

The compliment was strange, but equally Megatron was certain that it wasn’t _meant_ to be a compliment in the traditional sense of appeasing him. It had just been a statement of truth. 

His handler so far was… odd. Perhaps it was simply because Megatron had not met a mech like him before. All the mechs he knew were impassioned to some extent or another, loud in their emotions, shouting to be heard. This mech, this ’SW’, was quiet, but in a very level sense. His calmness drew attention. He did not _exude_ so much as he _attracted_ confidence in him. Not in the way Megatron was brashly confident, but in the formality and subtle finality of his words.

This was the type of mech who was either very trustworthy or a very capable con artist. 

But Megatron did not think his handler’s concern for him was feigned. There was no overdone and superficial simper to it that Megatron was accustomed to hearing from broadcasts of Senators, business-mechs, sponsors, and more. There wasn’t even a _hint_ of it. SW asked, offered him an out, stayed relevant to their tasks, and did not ask again. It was efficient and perfectly in line with what character of him Megatron had seen so far. 

It felt reflexive, as though he was used to commanding subordinates, but not merely commanding them — ensuring they were safe, offering outs for bots that he knew would not relent on their own. He was used to taking care of other mechs, Megatron suspected, and then worried that he’d made too many assumptions in his speculation. 

“You have two options going forwards,” his handler said. “The original arrangement is to find and arm explosives inside the storage facility. The other is to detonate at a range by firing.”

“I don’t have any blaster mods.”

“If I am allowed remote access, I may alter your frame to accomodate and create one.”

“No.” There was no hesitation to it. As much as Megatron had trusted SW so far, this was incomprehensible. Remote access meant that his very frame could be hacked, used against his will, and that wasn’t even broaching the subject of how what SW offered was _possible_. Modifying his frame with what he had to become blaster-compatible? Megatron had heard of a few attempts in the arena to do so, where mechs had gone to unscrupulous mod-vendors and found that their created cannon drew power from their own spark rather than any sort of installed reactor. 

“Very well,” was the reply, and as usual did not reveal any of the mech’s thoughts. Whether he was disappointed that he would not get unfettered access into Megatron’s processor or if he was relieved he would not have to wrangle Megatron’s coding into creating a ranged weapon was unknown. 

The warehouse came into view, innocuous against the unpaved streets and turbo-flora growing across the plains of Altihex, its loading doors all shut tightly. 

“There are an estimated two hundred and fifty three kill-drones inside and surrounding the facility,” SW said. Megatron nearly startled. 

Normal drones were easy to deal with — spark-less mechs, machines that were created, coded, did not learn, did not feel, and were not sentient. Naturally, some were developed for military use. Megatron had heard of them before and never faced them, but what he _had_ heard did not bode well. Some were made for combat. Others were made for tracking and destroying to ‘protect’ from trespasses on private property, especially those in high-crime areas. These were certainly the latter.

“While we have access codes into the facility itself, the drones will alert once they detect the explosion. I have plotted a route most likely to ensure your survival, but deviations are to be expected given the limited range of data.”

It struck Megatron suddenly that perhaps his handler was a _data_ analyst or some other type of scientific worker. It would explain much about his mannerisms. “The entrance beside the loading bay,” SW said.

Megatron pressed the keys instructed into the numberpad there with delicate care, his fingers larger than the user’s intended frame-type. The screen flashed. Then it said INVALID CODE.

The silence on the other end of the line was loud, and when SW spoke again, his words came more rapidly than before. “I will mute briefly to inquire into this. Please hold.”

The underlying static in the connection cut off, and Megatron hadn’t realised it filled the silence before. And suddenly suspicion struck him full-force until he could scarcely vent. If SW abandoned him here, if this had been set-up, Megatron was in unfathomable trouble. Not only had he just broke into and sabotaged a large factory with intent to harm ‘innocents’, he was standing on the doorsteps of another. 

He was on the outskirts of Altihex, a good joor’s walk away from the train station which he was not sure he would be able to find again without SW’s instructions, with an injured servo, and had possibly alerted all the building’s self-defence systems after the first failed break-in attempt. 

Hopefully the door was not wired to immediately alert. There were no alarms going off. It was entirely possible that employees or workers would accidentally use the wrong code — and therefore unlikely he would be in immediate danger. But Megatron couldn’t help the panic in him all the same, standing completely still at the door, staring at its closed metal. 

Perhaps he should turn around right now, before he was played for a fool. 

The static returned. “I will not abandon you,” SW said, as though he’d heard Megatron’s suspicions. Megatron wasn’t aware how loudly he’d been broadcasting his emotions, his fans running on high, his un-injured hand clenched into a fist. 

Megatron didn’t believe him. 

Surrounded by the flora and quiet expanse of Altihex, unmoored, Megatron didn’t believe him. This was part of the sign-up deal, wasn’t it? ‘You may die’. There were so many bots willing to join their cause; they could afford to throw him away when something didn’t work. Surely this was how they were so successful. 

“No,” SW said, and Megatron realised that he was still talking on the line to somebody, and that he hadn’t muted in a show of solidarity. The mono-tone of his synthesised voice was more nuanced somehow, more aggressive. “Your access pass was incorrect.”

A pause where the mech on the other side must’ve been offering assurances, and then — Megatron did not breathe — SW said, very flatly, “You _lie_. Consider your life forfeit.”

A longer pause. 

“2391? Very well.”

Megatron lurched back towards the panel, unaware that he’d even moved away from it, prepared to input the code.

“No, Megatron,” SW said, speaking to him now. “Leave now.”

All the tension in his gut released, pistons firing as he turned away from the door and broke into a long stride. “Why?” he said, but did not glance back at the warehouse. He had been given the order and was glad to follow it. 

His handler did not answer, but Megatron could hear a rapid clacking on a console keyboard. Megatron was halfway down the road, eager to put distance between him and the warehouse, eager to return to Kaon. He liked his new handler; he liked action, but he did not like the feeling of pieces moving — pieces _greater_ than him moving in the shadows. He saw only glimpses but did not know what plots moved, and they threatened his life. 

“He intended to betray us, again. It was evident in his tone.”

“You must be very good at reading mechs,” Megatron said. 

“There was a time where it was not such a boon,” his handler replied, and then fell silent. 

That would mean it was not a developed skill but a talent. Megatron alighted on the closest thing he could think of. “Are you an empath?” It’d be strange: a rarity, immediately condemning of identity, and unlikely because any mechs with such talents were either heavily monitored or condemned. It would also assume that his professional tone was a carefully created facade. 

“No, I am not. But you may consider me one if it will ease our future interactions.”

“So you know how I’m feeling,” Megatron said, touching his audial almost subconsciously as he trekked further and further away from the warehouse. It explained how SW caught on so quickly when Megatron began harbouring doubts. “So— so _that’s how_. That’s how you’ve never recruited any spies that’d topple you yet. But why the need for secrecy then?”

A reluctant silence met him. “When we lose agents, it is not usually to death, but to interrogation.”

“A battle of information.”

“To which you continuously pry deeper into, yes.”

“I’m sorry,” Megatron said, chastised. “I didn’t mean–“

“You have expressed the sentiment before.” Back in the interview room, he meant. Was SW the same mech in the interview room? No — Megatron doubted it. He’d probably just been listening in. “I offered the information because I believe you will not be captured, and because you are reluctant to co-operate otherwise.”

Megatron nearly stopped walking. “Don’t you think that’s too high of an investment?” he cautioned. 

“It is possible that I will be reprimanded for this — but it is a risk that I am willing to take. As an asset, you exceed expectations.” And in these moments Megatron didn’t know what to think of him, compliments perched just behind layers of monotone and impartial words. “Current analysis on T-MP concentration reveals that, with your frame composition, your servo should have completely dissolved.”

“What?”

“Similarly, data on your frame type indicates that you should have exhausted fuel and frame strain long before you did during your gladiatorial matches.”

“You were _analysing_ me?”

“You did not invite me to watch under the pretence of _entertainment_.” Any other mech would’ve said it archly, but again, here it was delivered as a bland statement. “It results in difficulty when calculating the level of danger and conflict you can endure. If I were more confident, I would have told you to enter today nonetheless.”

“Maybe your frame records are wrong.”

“They are not.” 

Megatron did not want his handler overestimating him and sending him into certain death. “Then what can I do to reduce that uncertainty?”

There was a short pause. “There is an option. I do not believe it appropriate to ask,” his handler said. 

“I didn’t think you _cared_ about propriety.” 

“You strongly rejected remote frame control. This is similarly invasive. I am not inclined to believe you would accept.”

“Tell me what it is,” Megatron said. 

“To show me your spark,” his handler replied. “It is a possible hypothesis for your anomalous capabilities. The audial recording device and camera will suffice.”

As expected, Megatron’s instinctive reaction was _no_. His spark was his _soul_. How could he bare it for anyone to see? Granted, there would be no touching, no controlling, just observation, but it rankled him all the same. Though he supposed it wasn’t as bad as remote frame control.

... But would he be able to do it? Find a secluded room in the rings, open his chest plates — Megatron himself didn’t even look at his spark. It seemed like an unnecessary vulnerability, reserved for loved ones and spark-bonds. He didn’t have any loved ones, nor spark-bonds, and he didn’t plan to. 

“Take a left when the path diverges,” his handler said, midst his thoughts. “It will return you to the station. We end here; you may remove the audial and visual device. You will not need to report to command.”

“I thought it was a requirement after every mission.”

“For other handlers only. I suspect you know why — their mission recordings go to _me_.”

Megatron’s processor churned through the new information he’d received- was it the empathy? Perhaps the loggings of recordings were so that _SW_ could listen through them to analyse through audio and his empathy alone. How many did he have to listen to, then? How many processors did he know the workings of? 

“Goodbye, Megatron,” SW said. “We will meet again on the 21st. But if your gladiatorial schedule changes, or another event requires attention, you may turn on the device and I will be there.”

The static vanished. Megatron reached up and turned the device off, storing it back into his subspace.

Megatron was still chewing over the thought that his handler was single-handedly listening through and analysing all the mission logs. Perhaps privacy did not _exist_ for him because of his empath abilities — or something like them. He’d mentioned that they were not always so beneficial, and that made Megatron think that he could not turn it off. He was always in tune with the feelings of others.

And he had a demanding workload, if he had to go through the recording of every single mission. If SW had to interpret the motivations and feelings of mechs all the time, then, to him, Megatron would be just another variable in the system, another statistic. Baring his spark, or offering remote control, was simply in the _job description_. SW practically read sparks for a living. In that case, Megatron felt a bit like a prude. It was _him_ holding them back while his handler clearly had no compunctions treading over lines of what would be considered by others as intimate and sacred. SW himself had explained to Megatron why he wanted to cross those lines. It was for a cause. It was _rational_. SW had been crossing those lines because it was productive and because he couldn’t _not._ Ironically, his handler did not let feelings get in his way, whereas Megatron’s did. 

So perhaps Megatron’s doubt was for nothing. Perhaps SW wouldn’t even _care_ if he saw Megatron’s spark. He’d seen Megatron’s vulnerabilities already, hadn’t he? He’d felt Megatron’s acute pain when delving his hand into the acid. He’d felt Megatron’s doubt and sudden gripping fear when he’d muted. What more was just _looking_ at a spark? Looking at a spark didn’t show how a mech _felt_. It didn’t reveal secret inner desires, or plans, or insecurities or flaws or dreams. It might’ve been a physical manifestation of their soul as their power source, but without touching, it was just a globe of light. 

But something still sat uncomfortably with Megatron about the thought. He didn’t want to be nothing, he realised. He didn’t want someone — someone whose real voice he had never even heard, someone who could be _anybody_ — to look at his spark and see it as just _data_. It felt like a foolish wish. It felt silly and idealistic. But no other mech had ever seen his spark, perhaps aside from when he was first forged, and he did not want it to be as clinical as SW always was. 

It was all contradictory. He didn’t want the exposure of his spark to mean something because it’d represent vulnerability. He didn’t want it to mean something because it was likely that it meant nothing to SW. But he _wanted_ it to mean- mean intimacy and trust and a milestone in his life because he was _naive_. 

He wanted to mean something. 

He’d joined the Decepticons in order to mean something.

Over-complication, he lamented, and spent the rest of the joor going around in circles and circles in his mind. By the time the station came into view, he felt like he’d worn down his logic and emotional circuits. 

And at that end, he decided he wouldn’t do it. 

He side-stepped the entire conundrum by settling on the idea that there wasn’t much valuable information to be gleaned out of looking and analysing his spark-type — and the paranoia that it was still a trap. Both of these were relatively untrue, he knew. He didn’t know SW’s capabilities, but he seemed extraordinarily resourceful so far. And his paranoia, he thought, felt like an old worn-out rug by now. 

Just trust in him, his processor whispered, and Megatron slumped by the window of the train-seat he sat in. SW had much more to lose than Megatron. Yet he’d taken every step to assuage Megatron’s fears and treat him well. 

Who was he? The question gripped Megatron’s entire frame in almost physical hold. Who _was_ this mech? He didn’t care much about the others — not the snobbish SS, who Megatron assumed was simply an upper-class somewhere, not the mech taking interviews and giving him his equipment, not any of the other handlers — who was _his_ handler? Who? How? Why? 

He would’ve welcomed even stupid, useless questions. What was his preferred colour? What were his friends like? How did he take his energon? Something, anything, insignificant details that would prove to him that this mech was _real_ — not the head and the shoulders and false niceties of the Senate. Not just a voice that Megatron dolled out his trust and his spark into. 

Megatron thought that he made a very poor soldier. 

By the time the train had finally pulled back into Kaon station, he filed out with his thoughts simmering like slow-heating liquid. Few mechs left on this stop with him. Kaon mechs did not usually have the credits to travel — and true to this, he hadn’t paid for the tickets — though that was rather fortuitous for him. And while Kaonians recognised him from far and wide, other mechs would be less inclined to either call him out or spread the knowledge that they’d seen him, because that meant they were familiar with the illegal Pits where he fought. 

The streets of Kaon were quieter at this time, but Kaon was a quiet city in general. Tumultuous, but quietly tumultuous. Everything conducted in the dark. Mechs scurried around him, afraid to meet his optics, while Megatron took the lesser-walked paths. He had no way of hiding his servo without making the injury obvious. Now that he had retuned to his city and the reminder of more gladiator battles within the week reared its head, he had to consider the treatment of his injury seriously. Not that he knew where to start. The gladiator surgeons were untrustworthy at best, ridiculously expensive, and would spread the word that he was recovering from an injury — they’d paint a target on his back. 

Perhaps he could simply wrap it up? He had a few more medical-grade bandages he’d stolen, and he thought he’d heard something about bursting the inflamed and swollen portions, draining them, and bandaging them. And washing them, too. 

What was he supposed to do?

His pedes carried him back to the ring almost automatically, and as he descended one of the many stair-cases hidden in alleys around Kaon, entering the expansive foyer, its familiar walls greeted him. There was an on-going match at this time, which mean all the spectators were inside already. The receptionist looked up at his entrance. 

“Megatron,” the mech said, “you have a… delivery.”

Megatron paused at the counter in surprise. A package was thrust at him as though the mech wanted it out of his hands as quickly as possible. It was neatly wrapped, every seam of paper in place. Along the front, written in bold red letters was CONFIDENTIAL. FRAGILE. Megatron doubted any of those signs would’ve kept gladiatorial administration from opening it. Most sponsors contacted gladiators directly due to its rampant corruption. 

He turned it over in his uninjured servo. An unbroken Senate seal stared back up at him. Megatron nearly dropped the package. 

Most mechs never even saw one in their lifetime.It was impossibly intricate, millions of labyrinthine lines spiralling out from the centre, twisting through each other, threading patterns within patterns and spelling glyphs that Megatron couldn’t follow.

As it was, he blanched completely and then strode out of the foyer into the ring’s halls, where the grime and darkness increased ten-fold, no front necessary to keep observers happy, and went directly towards his quarters. A Senate seal. The Senate. Assumptions blanked his mind. 

His roommate was never there; Megatron doubted he still existed, and as he sat on the edge of his narrow berth, he carefully broke the seal and opened the package. 

A bottle greeted him, then bandages, small packets of sterile wipes and needles and tweezers and replacement wires and a generous spread of medical supplies. There was a small folded note that, when Megatron unwrapped it, its stark whiteness strange in the environment, read a spread of instructions on how to drain, treat, and recover from chemical wounds. Extra notes had been added in the margins on how the equipment should be handled if one hand was out of commission.

What a ludicrous risk to have taken, to use the Senate seal so brazenly — Megatron assumed it was illegally obtained — just to get supplies to Megatron with haste and ensure it wouldn’t be opened and stolen. But Megatron thought it was a nice gesture all the same. 

Perhaps his handler was not as sparkless as he thought. 

*

Megatron recovered in no time, and when the day of his matches came around, while he favoured his un-injured servo, his wins were still clean and decisive. After, he retreated back to his quarters and spent a long time looking over the now-broken seal. Wondering. He could not read it, because the few glyphs he could pick out of the elaborate calligraphy seemed scattered and decorative. He’d heard rumours that seals were supposed to be individual to each Senator, but he didn’t know who would be able to interpret it to tell him which Senator it had been.

Should he dispose of it? Would it come in useful? 

He asked SW, after a few missions together. 

“You should dispose of it,” was the reply. 

It would most certainly be seen in any sort of disposable, given the number of trash-diggers in Kaon. “How?” Megatron asked, prying open an electricity hatch. One of the bombs he’d picked up from Decepticon command latched securely onto a side-fuse. 

“You consume it,” SW said.

Megatron’s helm bumped into the wall as he shook with laughter.

“It’s traditional,” his handler added, and Megatron, in the depths of a metals factory, couldn’t stop his laughter at the thought of it. 

“That’s _absurd_.”

“Traditionally, servants, or other lower-class mechs are to consume it for the properties of discretion. When sending missives among themselves, Senators use a different form of seal.”

“So this type was designed for corruption?”

“This should not surprise you.”

“No,” Megatron agreed. “It doesn’t. But it was amusing to imagine. Have you ever eaten one?”

“I have not. There are… mechs I am close with who are eager to.”

He had friends — other mechs — and why was it surprising to hear? Was it because SW struck Megatron as a solitary sort of individual? Megatron was about to inquire further when SW said, and Megatron _felt_ a shift in air, “Behind you.”

The bot went down with Megatron’s servo twisting into the form of a jagged blade and plunging into the vulnerable connection between his helm and shoulders, neck-cabling snapping bites of electricity and energon followed by strings of thin spinal metal. The mech clanged to the floor at the same time that alarms sounded. 

“Arm the explosive. We leave now — not through the doorway where you entered. Out your left.” Megatron was jabbing the sequence into the bomb and then barreling through another empty room, desks strewn in his wake, shelves clattering and spilling data-pads. “Keep going forwards. Hostiles enclosing on the exit.”

“How many?” Megatron grunted. He could hardly hear SW over the blare of sirens, and the corridors were painted black and red with flashing lights. 

“Ten. Above you: Drones arming in the ceiling-panels.” Megatron did not question how SW knew these things, but his arms transformed into longer spiked maces as he tore through doorframes with all the ferocity of a battering ram. Metal screeched as though alive — “Fifty, arriving now. You are coming onto the warehouse. Transform.”

He had learnt to never doubt SW’s orders. As soon as he crashed through the heavy-set fire-proof doors into the warehouse, he hit the concrete as a triple-plated tank, and before his handler even spoke, he knew where he was going– “Through the loading bay doors—“ and he burst into the open where blaster fire immediately rained out onto him, flickering across his plating. His answering shell blew segments of bodies into the air, everything scarred red and black, scrap shards erupting from the ground like blades or spines as Megatron’s engines roared their battle-cry. 

SW listed instruction after instruction — a pearl of calm within the storm — and Megatron found himself sliding between transformations as though he was fluid metal, a weapon in the servos of his handler, wielded but autonomous and _alive_. _Two, one,_ SW counting — leaping with all the power in his thrusters to distance himself from the eruption that seemed to melt the entire building for a moment before it bulged at the seams and fanned out in an explosion of heat. The sound of screaming behind him, Megatron was already on the road, screeching away, energon alive and alight in his veins. 

“Enforcer reinforcements have been intercepted; hostiles eliminated.” At the confirmation Megatron transformed back onto his pedes, and he left the Decepticon calling card. 

The Senate concealed it off national television, attempting to deny that the crimes were organised, trying to stifle concern, but Megatron knew that the handlers grew only more and more audacious. Megatron painted it in energon that dripped from his frame, from the chunks of plating that stuck to him, from the flesh splattered across his wheels. 

He left it in the middle of the road, inviting every mech to see it, and then drove off once more — towards the streets of Kaon. Even if they knew who he was, now, enforcers would not touch him in the dark heart of Cybertron.

In his wake: a four-pronged helm with two empty pits for eyes, lines sloping starkly downwards, sharper than the devil’s claws.

*

Megatron liked to keep the recording device on. SW was there more often than not, though if they weren’t on a mission, the background noise of console clacking could usually be heard, and sometimes the answers were a little more non-committal, more distracted. 

He sat alone in an energon bar today — one he frequented — looking out its permanently stained windows. Mechs were filling the streets of Kaon, listening to a mech that stood on the balcony of an old building that had a sign for _Mech Upgrades_ and shouted about injustice. Megatron wanted to be out there. He wanted to be giving speeches as well, but SW had told him to stay back. He was a target enough already for being a large perpetrator of industrial sabotage. It would do well to spread the rebellion across various mecha — maintain no weak link. 

“Do you write their speeches?” Megatron asked, watching the speaking mech gesticulate, a distant moving servo. 

“Of course not,” SW answered. 

“But you read them beforehand, don’t you?”

“Of course.”

Megatron smiled into his glass slightly, then his smile faded at the scarce amount of energon remaining. His sponsors were dropping off — some of them must’ve heard and been cautioned away from him. The matches did not pay well enough to cover his energon intakes anymore. He’d always been lucky enough — most gladiators did not live long. They were made to be disposable, and in the long run, their amount of pay reflected that. 

Perhaps he’d need some sort of frame alteration. Or maybe he needed to take more matches. But SW had him out on sabotage, intercepting envoys into Kaon, bugging and bombing and sabotaging factories, disrupting resources chains, intercepting the security forces that came to disband riots — nearly every two days now. 

The rebellion was picking up, Megatron thought. Anyone was able to see that now. 

“Some of their first drafts were incoherent,” his handler added, in a pause of the console typing. “A notable sentence: ’If we increase our resistance, resistance will be greatly increased, and more mechs will be on our side.’”

Megatron started laughing into his glass.

“But passion is present, and passion — no matter how illiterate the work is — tends to be tangible, and is one of the greater factors in convincing oration.”

“So you pick the fearless?”

“Yes,” his handler said. It made Megatron feel oddly warm inside, to be watching the fruit of labour blooming outside as he sat listening to the explanation of how it came together. He did not miss being among the crowd, rebelling, after all. Not if this was the alternative. “It provides an adequate example to the general populace: fearlessness. Anger. Pride–”

There was a pause, and a distant, “Hey,” on the other side of the line, and it was not SW. Megatron — though he hadn’t been aware that he’d been drawing aimless patterns against the side of his glass — stilled also. “What, you’re still talking? I thought you were off-duty.”

“I am always on duty,” SW replied to the unknown speaker, in his usual filtered monotone.

“I meant— look, you know what I mean.” The unfamiliar voice, also filtered through the monotone, grew louder. “Talking, you know? Who is it?”

SW was silent. Megatron heard the sound of moving metal. Then, “ _Oh_. This guy? Hey, Megatron.”

“Do I know you?” Megatron asked, wary.

“Who doesn’t? Big bad gladiator. Champion agent. And also the mech who _this guy_ doesn’t– hmmphmmh–“

“You will excuse yourself,” SW said. 

“Hey, hey hey hey, I’m not just here to yank your chain, promise. The boss wants to see you. Yeah, I know. _Again_.”

“Megatron,” SW said, as his way of apologising for having to leave.

“I can keep him company,” the other mech said. 

SW must’ve had an especially terrifying glare, because the next thing Megatron heard was a, “Fine. You big _grump_.”

“I will return soon,” SW said, and the static cut off as the line was muted. 

The rest of his energon was drained in one long draught, and when he placed the glass down again, he saw that the speech was cresting a peak. The mechs on the streets were cheering loudly enough to be heard through the seams and cracks in the windows. 

There was a certain intimacy afforded to the metaphorical backstage. All crew members were connected by the knowledge that they were working together, saw the dark and gritty, and generally stood outside the excitement. Megatron liked having SW there with him to share that understanding — not that Megatron knew what SW worked on — but if anything was for sure, SW was always working. 

It was one of the tidbits of him that Megatron had learnt. SW worked without defrag. He enjoyed it. He was not obsessed with data, he just found it more reliable and was adept at handling it. He wasn’t a scientist. He didn’t have a favourite colour. He took his energon bland. He lived with and was responsible for many other mechs, but they generally didn’t intrude on his work-space. He said that his natural voice was just as emotionless as the filtered monotone. 

Megatron asked if they’d ever meet after the war. SW said that it was possible Megatron would not want to see him. Megatron disagreed. 

“We could part on poor terms,” SW said. 

“I think I’d be happy to see you,” Megatron had said. 

And now he sat in the quiet of the bar, the only patron, drawing circles over the rim of his glass. Movement made him look up. The bartender had come around with a pitcher and was filling his drink. 

“You don’t need to–“

“It’s on me,” the mech said. “You aren’t out there, and you’ve been talking to yourself all evening.” He didn’t mention the fact that Megatron was a famous gladiator, which Megatron was strangely glad for. He’d come in here to go unrecognised and have a quiet space to talk to SW while still being able to see the gathering ongoing, after all. 

He nursed his way through this glass more slowly, thinking about the rebellion, thinking about his handler. The Decepticon symbol was popular, now. Someone had hijacked a plating-manufacturer and mass-produced the symbol as a badge, and then scattered it across the streets of Kaon, calling to arms. Megatron had taken one, looped a chain around it, and wore it into his gladiator matches. _I do not fight for you_ , it meant, to the audience. 

He had it in his subspace even now, and as the crowd outside roared louder and louder, their own badges shining, Megatron drew it out. Some mechs had had the badges welded onto them and graffitied it onto the streets. SW said that it was convenient to be able to attribute their cause to a single symbol. It created unity.

Megatron looped the chain around his neck. The idea of it appealed to him. He used a chain — a chain that he’d ripped off the walls of the gladiator pits — to show his freedom. It was a point of _pride_ to be standing for the Decepticon cause. He did not regret joining. Not since his handler was changed. 

To say that Megatron liked SW was an understatement. 

Perhaps it was just a natural consequence of someone who’d saved his life and been beside him through threat after threat. He trusted SW implicitly, and the sentiment seemed to be shared. His handler was willing to chatter with him, to get to know him, to let Megatron glimpse snippets of his life. 

The communicator clicked on abruptly, and Megatron was surprised at the speed with which SW had returned until he heard the voice on the line. “Hey,” the unfamiliar mech said. “For the record: if you’re playing with him, I don’t care how big and mean of a gladiator you are, I’m gonna hand your aft to you.”

“I do not have any ill intentions towards him,” Megatron said, but the communicator had already switched back to mute and there was no reply. Megatron heaved a vent, drinking the rest of his energon and standing, thanking the bartender as he left. The full scale of noise outside was immense, like a gale, and Megatron walked through the edges of the crowd, his Deception badge hanging around his neck, going the other way.

Faces surrounded him, impassioned, delighted. Megatron thought about how the speech — _fight for ourselves!_ — must’ve first went under the hands of SW, scrolling through the paragraphs, picking at misspelt words or redundancy, calmly, at his console, and then turned up _here_ to stir the heart of Kaon. It was awing to comprehend. 

Megatron had always been a mech that prided himself in action, in fighting the enemy that was set before him, and the gradual pulling of strings had seemed like a coward’s way to fight. It’d seemed like a _manipulative_ way to fight, one extorted by the Senate, but now he saw the grandeur of it and found himself appreciative.

Not that the inner workings of the Decepticons were known to everyone. Handlers, their identities, and their selectiveness remained a mystery. SW had said that some individual members that’d taken up the badge had tried industrial sabotage on their own, without a handler at their side. More often than not they were caught, but even under torture they had little vital information to give, and it wasn’t as though SW could order them to _stop_.

Megatron made his way back towards the ring, towards his quarters, and the sound faded away behind him as he descended into the underground of Kaon — where, as it opened into a large excavated venue, large speakers had been set up and more mechs were listening even there to the speech from above. Megatron walked past; no one stopped him, both as the champion of the pits and at the sight of the badge hanging proudly around his neck. He was not ignoring the Decepticons. He was already on their side. 

Down narrow corridors, and as he finally reached his quarters, considering a defrag cycle, the communicator came to life once more.

“I apologise for the interruption,” said the familiar voice. Megatron eased.

His quarters were small enough that they couldn’t realistically fit two gladiators that wanted their own space — but whoever his roommate was, they were never there anyway, so Megatron thought it adequate. There were no locks on the doors, no cleaners, and so the concrete walls were streaked with water and erosion damage. 

“If you intend to defrag now, I can leave you be.”

“No,” Megatron said. “Stay, just a little longer.”

He began pushing the second berth in the room towards the door; it was not a large distance to move, and soon he had it propped up to prevent immediate access. Then he slotted himself between the gap of his own berth and the wall, his frame barely fitting. 

“Megatron?” SW asked.

“You asked — on our first mission. Remember?” Megatron said, unlatching his chest-plates, swinging them open wide.

“It’s no longer necessary,” SW said. “I have approximated your range of capabilities already.”

But the room was filling with a low green light, and hydraulics hissed as the final few layers parted. Megatron looked down, the camera attached to the communicator, pointed where his spark swirled like a miniature star, seemingly contained, crackling and humming with a fine tremor. 

There was a surreal quality to the situation, as impulsive as the action had been. How could such a small thing power his entire life? Why was he not afraid? He seen and crushed many sparks in his life, but somehow this was different. This was an act of _life_. He stared into the optics of death every day, but here was a manifestation of its opposite.

He’d nearly forgotten how his own spark had looked.

“I hear it,” SW said, quietly. 

“What does it sound like?”

SW’s voice dipped, if possible, even quieter. “It sings,” he said. 

*

Months later found Megatron stomping down the streets, rain pouring from him in thick black streaks, washing energon from his last run away into invisible gutters. He was slightly scuffed, his plating scorched around the edges from blaster-shots, self-repair working valiantly at cuts in wires, and he was physically holding a particularly nasty slit in his throat-cabling together. 

SW had left already — he said that there was something he needed to attend to, and that they had another mission tomorrow that Megatron needed to be well-rested for — but Megatron was still too charged from the remainder of the fight. He’d travelled to the Rust Sea that morning, taking the train there, receiving strange looks, and wandered onto the back of the train as they’d approached the station. He’d climbed out one of the fire exits of the train, clinging to the top of it, his fingers digging into its plated steel, and from there, the world spread around him. Clouds swam by in long streams of paint and the colours smeared together like swirling ink. As the train clacked over the tracks above the Rust Sea, the sea met the horizon in a seamless line, reflecting and refracting until the landscape was alive with colour.

Then SW had told him to jump. He pushed himself off into that gem-like ocean and plunged, diving into the solution in a ream of bubbles that swarmed him as though alive. The ocean enveloped him, warmed by the sun, and when he kicked out a leg, he felt all his joints curve in a way never before as they flexed into long sleek lines. 

He caught himself in glimpses of darting mechanical fish, a smear of light under the water and gleaming metal framed by shocks of painted red. Creatures scattered around him in sprays of red and oranges and blues and greens and iridescent colours which he could not describe. In the Kaon everything was so dull, colourless, motionless. Even the riots were deliberate chaos. But in the world in the water, everything was moving, alive. Megatron kicked forwards and delighted in the way the liquid and moulded and guided him. 

It was one of the most beautiful things he’d ever seen. 

Mottled lights danced across his frame, a turtle ducking out of his way, and Megatron swam all the way to shore; then he followed SW’s guidance until he short-circuited the space-centre’s electricity mainframe and compromised it into a major information leak that would reveal all the names, occupations, IDs and critical private information of off-world travellers into the public. He’d had to fight his way out and cling to the _underside_ of the next train leaving by a single hand, scraping half the paint on his back in the process.

Now he was here, pushing open the door to a bar he now frequented. Rain splashed after him as black night melted into yellow lighting, and Megatron finally let go of his neck-cables, pleased to see that the energon flow there had stopped. 

It was usually quiet here — which was why Megatron preferred it. There had been fans attempting to follow him sometimes, but his surly nature and his dwindling number of matches in the ring had started to stifle that. There were a few other mechs at the tables and at the bar, though Megatron settled on his usual stool and ordered a low-grade swill. Some coal, please. 

The bartender found it amusing that he liked the coal. Megatron said that it was just a habit from the mines. “Take it easy,” the bartending mech told him, unperturbed at his injuries, and Megatron took the drink gratefully, still going over the mission of the day. 

It was strange that actions such as these were becoming regular for him. There were a number of close misses, the hole he’d blasted on the underside of the train to finally get on board had been discovered near the end of the trip, halting the train’s progress and forcing him to escape in the middle of Polyhex. His ID would get him arrested immediately — he was a wanted terrorist, after all — and only the trains from Kaon allowed him on board, which was why he had to either disembark discreetly or earlier than the formal station stops. 

Eventually SW had directed him to hunker down with the homeless — and it was remarkable that they were in better shape than _him_ , practically holding some of his wires together — and chattered to his handler as they waited. He’d been homeless before, SW had revealed. The slums were disgraceful places to live. But no mech came to help them, and the slums were only growing. 

Finally, a private transport vehicle had rolled up on the street, an unrecognised mech sitting in the front sat, also with a communicator clipped to his audial, and Megatron had been driven all the way back to Kaon. 

The door to the bar opened, admitting another rush of cold wind and pelting rain, and in walked a mech that looked certainly out of place. 

That must’ve been the first reaction when Megatron sat on trains and travelled, he thought. The mech was clearly not Kaonian because his plating was not grey and pallid, but rather a healthy bloom of blue. And his _legs_ were a pale white that Megatron thought would not have gone through the city unmolested. He looked away immediately, and was about to delve back into his thoughts when the mech took the bar-stool beside him and paid for medium grade. With coal. 

The barkeep eyed the mech with no short amount of suspicion either, and Megatron did his best to ignore the mech — except there were so many other seats still open in the bar and if he’d chosen _this_ one he clearly intended to speak to Megatron — and when the drink was finished and set down in front of the mech, he simply pushed it to one side until it sat in front of Megatron. Megatron looked up. 

The mech’s face was completely unreadable because it was covered with a visor and mask. But as Megatron watched, the mask withdrew, and a pair of sedate lips came into view, as pale as the rest of him. “I believe I owe you,” he said, and his voice was like a quiet lilting harmony, its accent unplaceable.

“I don’t know you,” Megatron said, because he did not have the time to be involved with strange mechs that clearly were from out of town, clearly too pretty for their own safety. 

The chest-plate glass did not escape his notice. The mech’s alt-form was some sort of _cassette_ player. Certainly not from Kaon. Just to confirm, Megatron’s optics flickered lower, saw buttons — that were right above the array, right above those tantalising white legs, oh _Primus_ — and jerked his eyes back up. 

The mech didn’t appear to notice his panic. “I don’t believe you do,” the mech said. “I stole into one of your matches before. It was very eye-opening.”

A gladiator fan, then. “Of what,” Megatron asked, caustic, shifting in his stool to try to put distance between them, “violence?”

“Sacrifice,” the mech said, unfazed. “You didn’t want to kill those mechs.”

“Who do you _think_ you are,” Megatron growled. His plating flared slightly. Despite the battering, he was still a formidable sight, and at the warning of his ire, the barkeeper scurried away to the other end.

“A mech who wishes to interface with you.” A pair of white hands steepled neatly together as Megatron’s vents emptied in shock. “I make a sacrifice tomorrow — and I’d like meet the mech who’d kickstarted all that before I do. No strings.”

“What makes you think I’d _possibly_ accept,” Megatron said. He turned back away, aggression tempered slightly, but filling rapidly with a sort of doubt. He glanced at the mech. No Decepticon emblem. Of course not. It didn’t mean he wasn’t a part of the cause. A higher-class mech wouldn’t be caught dead with a Decepticon mark. 

Megatron assumed it was just a front to talk to him in private, because the alternative was too ridiculous to consider. 

“Nothing,” the mech replied. His lips curled into the slightest smile, sinful, and Megatron’s tanks warbled dangerously. “You look like you need some space. Consider it. I’ll wait outside.”

“It’s raining,” Megatron said, and what an absurd thing to blurt, but the mech paused. 

“I know,” he said, and then rose from the stool and walked towards the door. Megatron stared at the bar counter, bewildered. The mid-grade drink was still there in front of him. Untouched.

“Frag,” he mumbled, and then after he heard the door open and shut, he fumbled his communicator out of his subspace and flicked it on. “Are you there?” he asked into it.

What sort of question had that even _been_? Megatron had been propositioned before. It wasn’t unusual. And in his earliest gladiator days, he’d accepted them before they became assassination attempts. 

So what was the qualm here? Interface wasn’t a crime, as much of a prude as he may have become. He was simply been too _busy_ to keep up with any regular contacts nowadays… and - and did it make a _difference_ whether or not the mech was offering as a covert Decepticon cover, or as interface as it’d been advertised?

“I told you to defrag,” came SW’s familiar voice. The roar of static was loud, almost drowning out his voice. What had Megatron interrupted him in? 

“Is a very blunt proposition for interface some sort of code I don’t know about?” Megatron asked, and realised how ridiculous it sounded only after it left his mouth. 

The mech was pretty, but Megatron’s processor was suddenly filled with a different thought. He didn’t want that mech. 

He- he wanted to be _here_. 

“Yes,” SW said slowly. “SS often makes his agents use it.”

“Okay,” Megatron said. “Thank you– I’ll— I’ll defrag soon. Promise.”

He flicked the communicator off, took a deep vent, downed the energon until his tanks were pleasantly fuelled and then stepped out of the establishment. 

Out in the waterfall of rain, the mech was a dark statue, water glistening all over his frame, his helm tipped back slightly, visor illuminating droplets like a halo. Ethereal. 

“Yes,” Megatron said, and as soon as the acceptance was out of his mouth a hand was wrapping around his wrist, firm, leading him down the streets, and Megatron stared at the mech in front of him, blue darkened like a storming ocean, wondering if this was the right thing to do as he was led to a hotel, and the mech paid for a night, and then they were ascending stairs. 

It was like walking through a dream-like state, the sound of the weather rapping against the walls and the window of the room they entered, Megatron allowing himself to be ordered onto the berth, and the mech said, “You may call me whatever you want when you overload.”

“What?” Megatron said. 

The mech was above him, straddling his hips, the visor retracting, a pair of glowing eyes looking down on him: holy judgement. His lips parted. “I was very clear about what I wanted. Were you expecting something else?”

“No,” Megatron said, because he wasn’t about to admit that he thought this mech was a spy, a Decepticon, and now that he was here–

He should leave. He should stop this. Guilt curdled up in his tanks. 

Blue.

SW’s favourite colour was blue. 

Blue stared down at him now. “Imagine I’m someone else,” he said. His hands slid down Megatron’s frame, memorising the edges of it, tracing it as though it was familiar. A hand cupped over his array, teasing at the seams of his valve, lithe and confident. Megatron felt heat pool. “I won’t begrudge you.”

Megatron closed his eyes. And did.

The mech was not there the next morning. But Megatron’s injuries had all been tended to. And there’d been an empty data-stick left on the table, a symbol of the Decepticon emblem carved beside it.

*

He was in the back of a shuttle being driven to Iacon, scraping his war-paint off, polishing himself, physically removing portions of his plating and his helmet concealed in one of the shuttle’s hidden compartments, holding a falsified ID and realising that exactly _why_ he’d been told to get a comfortable defrag the night before. They were admitted through border control easily enough, Megatron’s spark practically pounding at the thought. 

SW was silent in his audials up until now. The golden towers of Iacon rose outside the shuttle like a scene from a holovid: impossible. The streets were _clean_ , sparkling, no homeless lurking, not dreary nor drab, an untouched globe of gold form which the rest of the world was ruled. 

“Your stop,” the shuttle driver said, and Megatron re-donned his helmet, stepping out, facing a building whose glyphs were so elaborately labelled that he couldn’t read them. 

“Go in,” SW said. Megatron followed his instructions, as ever, and from that reassuring voice, from the familiarity of it, he drew confidence. He could pretend he was meant to be here. The foyer of the building was unlike one he’d ever seen before, glass sculptures and floors that reflected the ceiling, metal plants curling and blooming gems. Everything glowed.

“Tell the receptionist you’ve come for your internship.”

Megatron strode forward, with purpose across the seemingly endless expanse — why was so much space _necessary?_ —, opened his mouth, and then suddenly his frame dropped away from his control, systems blaring warnings before they were shut down just as quickly, numbness slamming through him as all consciousness was shoved into the corner of his processor and his frame was moving on its own. 

“I’m here for my internship,” his mouth said, in a perfect Iaconian accent. The mech at the desk didn’t even look up, and simply waved a hand towards the door beside, which lit up green as it was unlocked. 

“I apologise,” he heard in his audial. “I forced remote access. I misjudged. Your accent would’ve incriminated you.”

He was only handed back control after he entered through the door into a clinical white corridor. He touched his chest, his face, his other servo, the feeling of helplessness suddenly poignant. How long had SW been able to do that for? He’d never done it, not after he’d asked and Megatron had refused. But clearly it’d always been in his capacity. He didn’t even need Megatron to _allow_ him access. 

“Go down the corridor. Force the last door open. The facility will be alerted — but you will need to continue. Consider this your most dangerous mission yet.”

Megatron dismissed asking about the remote control, dismissed asking about how he would get out. He was _here_ , on a mission, and when on a mission, he could only trust his handler. 

The door was fixed with an elaborate optic-scan, but Megatron simply plunged a servo _through_ it and ripped it out, and then the door was torn off its hinges. There were no audible alarms, but immediately Megatron hurried his pace, striding into the corridor beyond, forwards, directed: up the flight of stairs, force open this other door, up further, further, through the door on your left, through that bolted door — resistance crumpled under him, and SW did not speak of what security forces were incoming. Megatron knew they were. 

He bumped into a shocked mech turning a corner and did not hesitate, barely waited for the order, ripped the mech’s helm clean off its shoulders, and he continued, holding the mech’s helm with him now, lifting it up to use through optic scans. 

“On your left. This last door.” Megatron plowed through it, into a dark room. “There is a console in front of you. The access pass is 165522.” His energon-slicked fingers typed it in as the console booted up, glyphs skimming by, and these he could read: initialising, systems booting. the invisible clock was pounding against him, in every beat of his spark. Knowing that security was enclosing, like jaws. 

SW told him what to type. Megatron had to turn his optics to full light to see the keys he was hitting, frustrated at his slowness, trying to follow the commands he was told to input, also slotting in the data-stick he’d been given — trying not to think about the mech the night before. Folder after folder cropped up on screen, obscure names and glyphs about errors, return feeds and console logs, deletion progress scrolling through, and as it did, Megatron skimmed.

“Now remove the stick,” SW said, but Megatron had frozen.

On the screen, what he had just ‘burned’ onto the data-stick, what he had just wiped from the console, what he had just copied and wiped from the console— a whole list-

It was the entire compiled list of Decepticon activity. Which facilities had been sabotaged. When. Which security forces met resistance. But there was _more_ — notes after each one of these, a triangulation of maps, recorded information about the owners of the establishments that’d been targeted, transgressions, movements within the Senate of Senators, their motivations, headings discussing hypothesises behind the Decepticon movement and a conclusion that was delivered with utmost certainty. 

Senator Ratbat. 

Every facility had been targeted against Senator Ratbat’s rival companies, or Senators who’d fallen out of favour with him. Incriminatingly, a transmission containing mission details had been intercepted from Ratbat’s home to Kaon. 

“No,” Megatron said, clutching onto the console, his fingers twisting it. His vision lurched around him. How could be believe this? Could he? The evidence here was staggering. He trusted them, he trusted them he trusted them, but here it said _every single one of these missions_ , half of them he’d even been a part of, were orders from _Ratbat_ — all the secrecy had been because- “You _lied_ to us.”

“Take the data-stick and destroy it,” SW said, and did not deny.

The corridor exploded with noise behind him, the shouting of enforcers, many pedes storming down, towards Megatron. There were no windows in the room. There were no more orders given. Megatron had been sent here to die.

He ripped the data-stick out of the console, furious. He would show this to Kaon. He would show them their betrayal. “You _lied to us!_ ” he roared. He had _trusted_ his handler! He had shown him his _spark!_

“You have been my greatest agent,” SW said quietly. The enforcers rounded the corner, visors glowing, their blasters drawn, white-painted mechs in full alloyed armour and graduated training, too many for Megatron to even consider overpowering. No where to run. SW against him. 

Megatron’s world crumbled into dust. 

*

The day of the hearing arrived. Ratbat insisted on polishing him up into perfection until every inch of his plating gleamed, and Soundwave sat docilely under the attention. The polish certainly seemed to help him through security. They emptied out his sub-space, scanned him from head to toe, and ordered him to empty out his cassettes. 

“Oh,” Ratbat said breezily, when asked, “I have an order for that. They’re its recorders. We’re taking them in to play footage. Here.”

Signed, authorised, a confirmation order that the cassettes were regulated for passage and were integral to Soundwave’s footage. Sealed by Senator Shockwave. The cassettes were scanned through by the security mechs too, their subspaces investigated, and ultimately disregarded as glorified minibots. 

Sentinel Prime watched on from the upper levels. Prime as he may have been, he was still chief of security. And this marked a monumental occasion: the first time a mech that was not a Senator was permitted into the Council Chamber for the first time in a thousand, three hundred and sixty one vorns. It was only because the Senate was desperate. They’d signed an authorising paper that, when Soundwave left, his memory banks of the hearing would be wiped.

All of Soundwave’s blaster systems had been dismantled. The security checks, repeated scans over his frame, investigations of his t-cog, demands that the visor and mask were withdrawn, lasted the entire afternoon. 

When Soundwave entered, the Senate was already in session. The halls were high, filled from Senators watching from their seats, perhaps a hundred of them, and every hundred pairs of those optics laid on him when he entered. Ratbat walked him across the floor proudly, cape trailing behind him, leading Soundwave by his wrist-chains to follow in his shadow. His cassettes were docked in him, buzzing with anticipation. 

The doors behind them shut, thousands of locks sliding into place. The Senate Chamber was a safe. No mech was permitted inside, only the Senators — not even Sentinel Prime. Ratbat had hopped through rule after rule to bring him here. There were no windows. There were no viewing decks. There were no communication relays until the allotted time passed. It was complete and utter secrecy. The Senate ran in circles of their own and dictated the entire globe. 

They were the ruling elite. They were never seen in person by the public, only in broadcasts. Each was surrounded by at least a hundred guards when outside. They were the untouchable. Soundwave broke precedent, though their intent to wipe his memory after revealed precisely what they thought of him.

“My fellow Senators!” Senator Ratbat said to them, standing at the podium. Soundwave knelt at his pedes, his chains jostling. “I promised you a grand display today. Surely you are aware of the rising crisis. Need I say? We have lamented terrorism after terrorism, growing unrest, bombings and dissent, mechs that express outcry at _our rule_. Sky spies have not proven sufficient. Curfews have not proved sufficient. Rallies grow upon the streets, and yet we do not know _who_ we need to silence, and therefore they continue unchecked.”

There was a subtle murmuring, Senators agreeing. Soundwave was not surprised; he had heard Shockwave speak of growing distress within the Senators of their assets and the completeness of their will.

“We shadowplay the mechs that defy us,” Ratbat said. Shockingly brazen. It would stir the public into outcry if they knew processors were being altered, but nothing inside the Chamber ever left the Senate walls. “Yet we do not know who defy us. Or so we thought. My pet,” he gestured down at Soundwave, who shifted under the scrutiny and raised his helm to the eyes watching him. “Has manufactured a scenario by infiltrating deep into the system, and– will you show them the list, pet?”

Soundwave did, a projection expanding from him onto the wall behind Ratbat, designations of mechs: every mech who had registered to become a Decepticon. He ordered from by class. The upperclass, first. It would catch Senators’ interests. Ratbat stood back and let it scroll, satisfaction in his every strut.

“Ratbat,” Soundwave heard called from the stand, “surely you can’t expect us to believe this.”

“Have you ever heard of the _Decepticons_?” Ratbat asked. “Yes, the emblem that terrorists so enjoy leaving around. Pet, project a picture of one for me.”

Rumble was ejected, laying beside the podium in cassette form, and Frenzy was played. The sharp-pointed insignia replaced all the names, rotating in its 3D model. 

“Does that remind you of anything?” 

Ratbat turned Soundwave’s face towards all the Senators, letting them see. The resemblance was unmistakable. The insignia was Soundwave’s helm, without the visor. His audial fins, his vent and emblem. Mutters erupted across the seats. 

“And– you must know what some mechs wear these badges. Pet? The map.”

The projection changed again, Frenzy ejected, Laserbeak played, into a satellite view of Iacon. There were red dots scattered around it, and as Soundwave zoomed out, further from Iacon, into the other city-states, more red dots appeared, hundreds and thousands and then hundreds of thousands of them. 

“The badges have some very _very_ subtle nano-engineering. They contain trackers. What you see here are the positions of mechs wearing them.” Ratbat’s smile grew wider. “I set my pet here into espionage, and it performed so admirably that it _heads_ them, Decepticons, now. And it’s _my_ pet. That entire list? It’s free for you to use. But remember that you will be in my _debt_.”

There was more muttering, louder, now, and one Senator stood and said, “We still have no confirmation if your information’s true.”

“Ah,” Ratbat said. “Decimus?”

Another Senator, his hands fisted on his desk, looked up. 

“I believe you found something in your office today, didn’t you? Did you get a confession out of him?”

Attention turned, hungry attention, greedy attention, attention waiting and willing to see what Decimus would say. “Yes,” the mech muttered reluctantly. He was infamously a rival of Ratbat’s, Soundwave knew. He was the one who’d been paying close enough attention to Ratbat to compile the information that the Senator had been behind the attacks. But here he wouldn’t resist Ratbat because he _knew_ that the opportunity of a list of all Decepticons was too great to pass up. “The gladiator of Kaon, the one we know to be a major participator in violent acts, confirmed responsible even for the bombing of the International Space Centre, was found in one of my branches. And under processor-reading methods, we discovered he has been fighting under the Decepticon cause — which he had previously been unaware was orchestrated entirely by Senator Ratbat.”

Silence met his words. 

“Do you want the list?” Ratbat asked. Soundwave ejected the remainder of his cassettes into a neat pile, still kneeling. He switched recording over into his own processor and files. Ravage lay in his hands. The Senators were not paying attention to him. 

Even if they did, Soundwave doubted it would have saved them, because the fatal flaw had already been made. What every mech, including Ratbat, including Sentinel Prime, including the reams of security, did not realise — was not about _him_. The security checks, the paranoia, the exhaustive work that Soundwave had orchestrated, everything, was not to get _him_ into the Senate’s untouchable Chamber.

The cassettes were triple-changers. 

Ravage slid into his third form, shifting from cassette into something more distinctly shaped, for a moment flashing Soundwave a broad grin as his muzzle snapped into its circular barrel, the metal sleek and chrome, sights, hammer, trigger, grip — Soundwave tipped his hand up, aiming Ravage directly at Ratbat, and fired. 

The shot pierced through the underside of his head, through the chin, blowing out his optics, and then out the top of his processor. The other cassettes were transforming now, joining onto Ravage, the blaster’s barrels multiplying, their sparks merging together as a pure source of power with more potential than any generator, Soundwave standing as the Senators around him froze, shock too long to set in — _foolish_ Senators with no weapons of their own, no alt-modes of their own, so secure in their places, trapped in here with _him_.

“Goodbye,” Soundwave said.

*

“Proteus,” Senator Shockwave said, throwing one data-stick down, “Decimus—,” another clattered beside it, and then Shockwave dropped all the rest above them, “you _could_ have waited for me to try get Ratbat’s last will too, Soundwave, but no.” He was now the sole remaining Senator with the controlling rule of and will of all his peers, able to override and reform the Senate as he saw fit.

Soundwave did not grace him with an answer, leaning over the barrel of his sniper-scope, trained directly at the door. The Senate was due to end any minute, and the doors would automatically open. According to Shockwave, Sentinel traditionally stood waiting to greet them, trying to glimpse some tail-end of what happened inside.

Bodies lay around him. Over a hundred of them, sprawled with smoking holes in their bodies. Energon dripped down the stairs, pooling near the podium where Ratbat’s greyed frame lay. 

When the doors opened, slowly, had inched only five nano-metres apart, Soundwave fired, and the shot that contained the energy of five — six, including his — merged sparks slid right between the heavy-duty, triple-titanium plated doors, into and through the other end of Sentinel’s processor. 

The Prime was dead before he even hit the ground.

*

Megatron did not know how much time had passed. It had to have been at least a week. 

He did not have an in-built chronometer like many, and the initial anger had burnt out into ash. He was alone in a dark room, collared, chained to the wall. Not a single window. Some sort of jail. He recalled devices being latched onto his helm, devices reading his processor, jeering, the threat of a sewage tank. 

They’d fill him up with sewage if he tried to erase his memories, they’d said, and laughed, and Megatron would’ve done it anyway if it weren’t for the fact that he’d _wanted_ them to see. Wanted them to see that he’d been betrayed. Stinging and hurt and knowing that somehow his handler had been working for the Senate this whole time. He would give all that information willingly. They wanted to know why he’d broken it? It was Ratbat’s fault. It was all him. 

Not that it would matter, soon. His jailers had not returned, and Megatron remained there, kneeling, chained down with inhibitor cuffs clamped around his wrists. The terror of Kaon fooled and lured here and betrayed by the farce of the Decepticon army. 

Megatron’s empty tank clenched around the data-stick. In a fit of desperation he’d swallowed it. It was made of non-digestible materials, and he would be able to tear it out, his own tank, to reveal to the evidence to Kaon. The evidence to the mechs that’d, like him, been betrayed. But it was quickly ceasing to matter, because he was shutting down. 

He’d enter long-term stasis soon. He had hit the bottom of energon-deprivation before. Hibernation.

He found it hard to hold onto his anger as his processor filtered out the non-vital systems. He knew he was angry. He knew he was _enraged_. But his processor refused it, shutting down the systems, leaving him blank. 

His optics offlined. His engines quietened. His thoughts sluggishly fell away as though into a deep, dark lake. 

When the door opened, he thought it was a hallucination, or that his jailers had come to refuel him even though he was of no use to them now. 

He heard from a voice that he was not sure if he knew. A low roar grew behind it, and Megatron lifted his helm to see—

A wreath of light. So bright it looked like fire. A mech tearing his chain off from its anchor in the wall.

*

Megatron was led out into the brightness, swaying on his pedes, a cube pressed to his lips and fuelled. The mech, blue, blue blue blue, red visor, familiar, the mech who’d interfaced with him, who’d given him the data-stick, was holding him, guiding him through an unfamiliar police station where more mechs were out there arguing. They paused at the sight of him and then seemed to explode into uproar again. 

It ended when the blue mech dropped something on the desk. A Senate seal. “Let him go.”

Suddenly the mechs behind the counter scrambled to obey. They thrust a key for unlocking Megatron’s inhibitor cuffs towards the mech holding him, and the mech — what was his name? Had Megatron never asked for his name? Not even during their interface? — unlocked the cuffs and collar and then Megatron was free. 

His processor began to clear, the fresh fuel pumping through his veins, his crucial systems onlining again. He shuttered his optics as he was led further, outside the building and onto the streets, confused. Megatron reached for the cassette-player. Touched his battle-mask as though it could tell him through the feeling alone. A deep red visor stared back. “You–“ Megatron said, and reset his vocaliser that was thick with static. “Who are you?”

“I am Soundwave.”

Who was Soundwave? Megatron looked down. The cuffs that Soundwave was wearing, broken, had not been there the first time they met. Megatron swore that he knew him beyond that first meeting, though. Under the light of days something about Soundwave was too familiar to be true. 

Soundwave jerked his helm away, raising his arm, a comm-device unfurling from his wrist. “Pardon me,” he said. “I have to take this.”

For the first time Megatron actually registered where he was. He was in Iacon, the city of gold, but something had changed, though he was not sure what. There were no mechs walking and wandering the streets. He stared up at the too-blue sky, his optics adjusting, and suddenly a roar of engines met his audials and a flight-frame shot down towards them. Megatron’s instinct was to fire — but his weapons systems had not come online yet and they only whined feebly in response. 

But the flight-frame did not attack. It touched down, plating gleaming, thrusters still glowing hot as it said, “So _this_ is the mech that gave me so much grief? _Pri_ mus.” He was looking directly at Megatron.

“I don’t know you,” Megatron said. He saw Soundwave shoot a glare under the visor towards the flight-frame, but the flight-frame waved a daintily painted hand. 

“Really? Well I know _you_. You nearly got me fired and fried, mech.” His voice was unpleasant on the audials, screechy and high, and for a moment Megatron was certain that he’d heard it before. The flight-frame rested his hands on his hips, regarding Megatron with his nose jutted up slightly. Megatron wanted to smack him. It seemed to be an itching instinct. “I should get to push you around a little,” he said. 

“Prowl,” Soundwave said into his wrist-comm. “If you’ll pardon me.” He flicked a small mute-switch, and then said, “Starscream, I did not call you here simply to _provoke_ Megatron.”

‘Starscream’ smirked. “It’s a talent.”

“Would you like to conference with Prowl instead?” 

“Me? Make Shockwave do it! What about Skids?”

“Skids is writing contracts for the last of the Senators’ wills. Shockwave is negotiating with the police force.”

“Oh, we know he’s not _negotiating_ with Pax.”

“You know about Pax?”

“ _Please_ , why do you think I stopped bugging you about how you got him under your thumb? I walked in on them last week that one time when they were–“

“I see,” Soundwave said, visor flaring bright. “In that case, _you_ will talk to Prowl. I hope you read the proposed legislation and treatise _very carefully_ , because Prowl is already exceedingly hostile.” 

“What?! Soundwave–“

“And I _will_ be listening,” Soundwave said. Megatron saw Starscream’s wings droop. “Handle this professionally, Starscream. There is little room for indiscretions.”

Starscream, Soundwave, their voices, all muddling together, haphazard ingredients that were dropped into a cauldron on high heat — and Megatron erupted. “ _You!_ ” 

Starscream. His first handler. That was his voice, his irritating screeching and distinctive voice. He’d turned off the modulator once. Megatron finally placed it. 

He thought he saw Soundwave’s visor flare. 

Starscream looked up and raised an optic-ridge. “Were you not listening? Important call. Keep it down.” He flicked his wings and stalked away, raising his wrist to speak into it, and Megatron was left with Soundwave, bristling with the charge of new information.

“He was my handler,” Megatron said, looking after the mech that left. “He–“ Suddenly, like another set of weights dropping, he remembered the data-stick, the betrayal, the fact that Decepticons were not fighting for the lower-caste but for _Senator Ratbat_ instead. He opened his mouth, but his vocaliser made no noise.

“Senator Ratbat is dead,” Soundwave said. “Come. Walk with me.”

Megatron, lost, did, simply because Soundwave’s answer had dropped the floor from beneath him and he did not know what else to do. Senator Ratbat… was dead? How? 

The streets were very empty. He saw a lone mech scurry by. Where were the citizens of Iacon? Questions swarmed his processor, vying for attention, for answers. 

“The Senate has been removed,” Soundwave said. “I killed them in session. A peace treaty and terms are being drafted now, but mechs across Cybertron struggle to accept this because Decepticons have long been branded indiscriminate killers.”

Megatron didn’t understand. This mech had killed the Senate? How? Senators were untouchable. They were not _seen_ by the public. Let alone be _killed_.

He looked left, looked right, and in the giant holo-screens floating above the cities he could finally see the glyphs scrolling past. Senators murdered. Decepticons claim responsibility. Sentinel Prime murdered. Please stay in your home until the killers are apprehended. 

Megatron had been- wrong? Decepticons were not ruled by Ratbat after all?

They walked farther, and Megatron saw more and more of the signs. Screens above store-fronts, screens above enormous lavish fountain-filled squares that were empty of mechs. They read the same thing. The Senate is dead. The Prime is dead. Please stay in your homes.

Soundwave said, “What you saw was deliberate misinformation; Decepticons outwardly worked for Senator Ratbat, but that was never the final intention. The Decepticon cause was created as a con of a con. But it has all been means to an end. You have kept the data-drive?”

Megatron nodded mutely. It could be removed from this tanks. This mech— 

“Then we will use it when we present our case. As mentioned, Decepticons and my removal of the Senate are resisted by the public at large because of the Decepticon reputation. What you have on the data-drive, gathered by Senator Decimus himself, lays the reprehensible actions of the Decepticons on the responsibility of Senator Ratbat — who is conveniently deceased.

“Poisoning, industrial sabotage, travel ports: planned under the executive orders of Senator Ratbat. They may not trust my records, but yours are authentic with Decimus’ seals. It will appease those who are not Decepticons. And those who _are_ Decepticons should be appeased by the fact that the Senate is _dead_. From there, we have room to re-build a system. Negotiations begin with Prowl, Sentinel Prime’s second-in-command, even now, and temporary authority remains in the place of Senator Shockwave, who I have colluded with in orchestrating this scheme.”

“A Senator? Why did you keep a Senator?” Megatron asked. “He could betray you.”

“Blackmail,” Soundwave said. “He found a Conjunx in a commoner, and he was the mech that initially, illegally, raised me. This both indicated to me that he had inclinations towards justice and that I would be able to force him under my hand.”

It was all too convenient, too _neat_ , not to be orchestrated. 

“This plan was a long time in creation,” Soundwave admitted. 

“You keep answering the questions I haven’t asked,” Megatron said, instead, because it was too much to process all at once.

The Senate was _dead_. He’d dreamed of it. He’d thought and wondered and imagined it, but now that he was being greeted with it, it was too unreal. How could it be possible?

“Because I am a telepath.”

“I know who you are,” Megatron breathed, finally sure, because he’d _hoped_ it, but hadn’t dared to accept it to be true. 

“I am aware,” Soundwave said, and stopped walking. “You did very well. You trusted me as far as I needed to be trusted, and didn’t trust in me as far as I needed _not_ to be trusted. Your honest belief of betrayal proved useful as a testimony in the Senate Chamber for me to gather final recordings revealing their corruption. Now, would you be content to go further?”

He looked over at Megatron, and even through the mask, Megatron could tell his lips were curling into that private, confident little smile. “Would you like to rebuild an empire with me?”

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote a fic where there was no explicit sex. what monster have i become?
> 
> Also, I thiiiink I saw a prompt somewhere for this, but I can't find it now. if anyone knows of it, please let me know so i can credit accordingly!


End file.
